Our Journey : May 14, 2024 - Fraser-Thompson River Canyon and the town of Lytton

5/17/2024

May 14, 2024 - Fraser-Thompson River Canyon and the town of Lytton

Today was road trip day! Our first stop was the picnic grounds across from the campground. It also looks down into the Canyon. The river thru this canyon is the Thompson River. Six kilometers south it meets up with the Fraser River. In the different books I have read, this canyon has also been referred to as the Fraser Canyon or the Thompson-Fraser Canyon. (It gets a little confusing.)

Some interesting tidbits about the area:

So even though we are far from the southern deserts, this area is very desert-like. In fact, in 2021, the town of Lytton, 6 km. south of here, recorded the highest temperature in Canada - 121.3 F. "not only broke the record for the all-time highest temperature in Canada, but it became hotter than the historical high temperature of any single country in South America or Europe".

Sadly, the next day, it burned to the ground.

The picture below shows where we are - Skihist Park.

The Thompson-Fraser Canyon:

Trains tunnels and track protectors to keep the snow and landslides from the tracks:

Here is the canyon - the highway is on the left and the railroads (Canadian National Railroad and Canadian Pacific Railroad) are on either side of the river. This is a busy corridor. An interesting tidbit:

"CN’s trains are exceptionally long, with the majority now exceeding 10,000 feet in length and some being as long as 15,000 feet. These long trains include intermodal, manifest, and grain. In recent years, grain trains have exceeded 12,000 feet (or 200 cars), with two units at the front and one or two mid-train DPU’s. Intermodal trains can been extremely long, upwards of 270 cars. Some mixed freights consist of huge hauls of lumber coming from northern BC, and can be as long as 12,000 feet with support of a DPU. Potash trains are uniformly 170 cars (or 8,500 feet) and coal trains, while rare, usually an average of 7,600 feet.

CP’s trains tend to be heavy on bulk commodities. CP runs numerous coal trains a day that are uniformly 152 cars with DPU setup of either 1x1x1 or 2x1x1. The railroad also runs many grain and potash trains (the latter the same length of CN), along with intermodal and sulphur. Though CP trains may not be as long as CN, they are quite frequent."

Yes, we could hear them all the time. No horns just the rumbling and squeaking - it was nice.